I would have preferred if it were someone else to write this post as I am not comfortable doing so but I feel like the following needs to be said and I want to get it off my chest.
Some of it relates to recent events, some of it concerns matters that did not feel right to me for the longest time. I will refrain from naming any individuals but to some of you it might be obvious anyway.
The first point has been discussed on Telegram already. I think that is a shame, these are things best addressed as a community on here. Poloverse > Facebook | Telegram
I will separate this into multiple posts as some people might not want to take an active part in the discussion but might still want to show agreement with any of the following points by liking the respective posts.
Not sure if it is a call out or a rant. Take it as you want. This might not gain me any popularity points but to be honest, post-covid, I do not actually care that much any longer either.
I am seeing
two bullies.
One is more of a bully to players on the court, while the other is more of a bully to players off the court.
One player is a physical bully, the other player is a verbal bully.
They admit their wrongdoings and I believe them, when they say they are working on being better.
But it has been more or less a decade, a decade of bullying innocent people of this community.
I do not know the best measure to address this but I know that âI am working on itâ simply does not cut it after seeing this behavior over and over and over again.
We need to enable and empower the community to deal with this kind of behavior such that innocent players, refs, parts of this community no longer need to suffer.
To say it with the words of BP Leipzig: Diese Aggression läuft hier nicht!
I am disgusted
by the toxicity of hearing a player seemingly brag to others about telling a player on the court ââŚif you do this shit againâŚ. I am going to fuck you upâ and consequently, the group making fun of that players apparent lack of English.
I am ashamed
by the insensitivity of this community chanting âBouchard Al Assadâ. A play on the name of a dictator responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and I ask myself how would I explain this to Syrian friends who fled and left everything behind, were they to witness this at a tournament in Vienna.
This from a community that prides itself on being inclusive.
EDIT:
To clarify, I don´t know the origin of this chant and am not blaming Bouchard. I am calling out the community that deems it OK to use this chant.
I am wondering
why the one time, the first time a tournament hosted in Europe tries to extend its understanding of inclusivity to non-white person, a non-white person is criticized publicly for accepting this token of inclusivity.
Are those that criticised aware of the struggles the person may have had to face, to get where they are now?
Why was this criticism of that persons choices not voiced last year, why not at any opportunity after this one tournament. Why did it have to be the one time, the first time a European tournament catered to the inclusivity of non-white people.
I am left wondering about this.
as we grow as a sport and become more mainstream this whole behaviour has to go.
but it also took us time as a community to adress such issues and as you said it took a decade to organize us as a proper structure that is even able to define rules
thanks for voicing this publicly i hope people respect this post.
i would say that the hard part is as a ref or organizer you have to confront people with âunsportmanshipâ toxic behaviours and most dont want to be involved in that.
i would like to create within the euro board or the nah board a body that takes complaints and resolve them for geoups who dont want to deal with it , maybe people would feel more accountable.
hope people respect the public space more and realize not every joke or heckle is good to say
âI am sorry judge, I will try do better next time. I am the victim of my own ego. Buhuhuhu.â
âI believe you, case dismissed!â
To be repeatedâŚ
Apparently there was an incident of disrespect towards a ref and towards another player who came to de-escalate the situation during berlin:mixed.
Refs in Bikepolo are volunteers and donât deserve any of this disrespect, in fact no-one in this community does.
But Bikepolo remains toothless towards players abusing this âoversight of a lack of consequence for problematic behaviourâ over and over again.
A first and easy to implement step to address this is to make sure that tournament organisers make clear statements of support in the tournament thread, in the welcome speech, wherever appropriate to empower refs.
Something along these lines will already go a long way to support refs:
âThis tournament will not tolerate any disrespect towards refs. We encourage and want to empower our refs to feel confident in handing out penalties for such behaviour. We are open and encourage refs to come to us to discuss any incident that may require further and more severe escalation.â
The culture is changing. Letâs find ways to address this.
The Central Limit theorem in the study of probably states: When the sample size is big enough, the distribution becomes a bell curve. At the Berlin Mixte we had 48 teams, 3 courts, and 3 days of play.
I am proud of the all the players and refs at the Berlin Mixte. As Pajac mentioned in another forum, we are all different. We are all capable of small behavior sometimes, especially in sports. What we do collectively and individually afterwards is a bigger part of what defines our community.
Conflict in sports doesnât follow a normal distribution; it typically fits a negative binomial or power-law distribution. These are positively skewed, with frequent low-severity incidents and a long right tail of rare, high-severity events. Conflict often depends on factors like in-game intensity, stakes, refereeing quality, crowd influence, and player self-control, making it unsuitable for a standard normal model. At the individual level, bad behaviour likely follows a power-law distribution, where a few individuals account for most incidents.
That the probability of bad behaviour increases with event size isnât wrong, but treating it as an independent variable implies itâs independent of our actions to reduce it. This seems a bit cynical and dismissive of accountability. Instead, we should believe we can influence its frequency. Leaving aside the disproportionate effect of certain players on the likelihood of conflict.
We need a player code of conduct that is strictly enforced. Referees should not tolerate abuse, and mandatory penalties for specific behaviours would reduce reliance on discretionary decisions in high-pressure moments. Players must expect consequences, and referees should expect respect.
also give name. and players loosing it on stream should be reported. if one person misbehave but isnt checked at one event because of their lack of enforcement , feel free as an organiser to send them a mail saying theybare not invited in the upcoming event.
âwe have received your registration but unfortunately cant accept such behaviour displayed there [ insert video link ] please try next year after showing good form, xoxo the orgaâ
I was impressed by Berlinâs code of conduct which they posted on the courts during the Berlin mixed this year. I wonder if an official code of conduct could be made for Bikepolo.
How would you see the cards applied?
In-game I donât think we need them neccessarily, since we already have minor/major/misconduct penalties, but we could add them on top of those for better signalling (e.g. minor/major is yellow + some other sign to show the player advantage duration, red is misconduct) and possibly two yellows resulting in one red - with maybe an option of a yellow as a pure warning w/o minor/major penalty?
I definitely see a value of cards or other âpenalty pointsâ issued on a tournament/season scale, but Iâd personally go for a single warning and then out of tournament penalty at a discretion of the Main Ref and/or Head Ref (to be able to override potential abuse of that power).
Whether that ban carries over to next tournaments should be at those tournaments orgs discretion, but those penalties definitely should be made public.
